USDA’s Inventory & Improvements Marci Baranski, PhD USDA Office of the Chief Economist Climate Change Program Office

USDA GHG Inventory 2  Covers forestry and agriculture only  Published every 4 to 5 years  Same data as EPA’s inventory but further disaggregated  Includes on-farm energy use  Report that covers released soon

Cropland data improvements underway  Goal: improve national activity data for cropland  Activity data: “data on the magnitude of human activity resulting in emissions or removals taking place during a given period of time”  Newly available data source: Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) survey  Working with USDA NRCS and partners to analyze CEAP data to use in National Inventory  CEAP data will be incorporated into DayCent model for cropland to estimate GHG fluxes for soil C and N 2 O from fertilizers  Improved data on fertilizer & manure application, tillage, cover crops 3

Building blocks 4  USDA's Building Blocks for Climate Smart Agriculture & Forestry  Remove 120 million metric tons of CO 2 equivalent (MMTCO 2 e) per year by 2025  Voluntary and incentive-based  Focused on multiple benefits  Meet the needs of producers  Assess progress and measure success  Cooperative and focused on building partnerships

How to assess progress? 5  USDA program data  Data collected by USDA agencies.  e.g., acres covered by CRP, projects funded by EQIP, # of digesters installed.  Usually reported annually  Can track progress  Measures do not have a unified metric. Used for progress but not comparison.  May not separate new vs. continued activities  Doesn’t capture temporal or spatial spillover, or anything beyond USDA program boundaries

How to assess progress? 6  National GHG Inventory  National level data for agriculture and forestry.  e.g., national survey data, forest inventory.  Activity data converted into GHG flux calculations.  Representative of national activities & captures net impact of USDA and non-USDA activities  Can be converted to a unified metric (carbon dioxide eq.)

Next steps 7  Prioritize data needs for Building Blocks  Improve agricultural activity data  Manure mgmt, tillage, cover crops  Utilize existing surveys: CEAP, ARMS, etc.  Feed activity data into inventory  National Inventory should reflect efforts of the Building Blocks

Thank you! 8  Contact info:

Crop residue and grassland burning datasets 9  Current inventory tracks non-CO 2 emissions from burning, but does not account for effect of residue burning on soil N and C  Will derive burning histories for NRI cropland and grassland points in selected states  Probability distributions functions will be developed for fire events based on the burning histories  These input data will be ready to apply in the next National Greenhouse Gas Inventory